Category: Poetry
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Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now
First a note about the painting, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, that serves here as a symbol for Joni Mitchell’s song. Both speak of life, love and beauty. For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical…
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a funny thing happened …
Cargoes by John Mansfield I woke up the other morning with an old verse I’d learnt at school — not sure which year, but it was at least half a century ago — playing in my head like on a tape recorder. And the rhythm was still there! I’m sure some of my readers will…
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The earth is sick and in need of salvage
Sick Earth The earth is sick, its lungs stuffed and out of puff, its bones brittle near to break cancer cells spreading throughout its crests amid tumescent landfill dense as gas Her womb’s barren as melting ice all of this oblivious only to the unexamined life
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Our Galactic Address: A Poem
Galactic Address What are we doing here on this moving globe Earth insects swimming in the Orion Way far from the centre of the Galaxy clinging to the cavity of the Local Bubble in this solar system called the Milky Way? An insignificant metal ball, trapped in motion, endlessly, drawing circles concentrically around the fiery sphere,…
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A Window into Poetry
The photo below is of my first childhood house at Waterview, via South Grafton. It was taken several decades after my time spent there within the bosom of my first family. I think it is the inspiration for the poem, below, which is probably my best. Poetry is not my most practised genre, but I…
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Prufrock: Part 2
The negative urban images in the poem are juxtaposed with many very pleasant images. Some of these are the beautiful women and art in salons, and the mermaids frolicking in the sea at the end. This “feminine imagery” stays with me, rather than the negative ones of growing old, smoky streets, and lonely men. That…
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Prufrock: Part I
Sentiments in the poem are of loss, love, and melancholy related to growing old. Eliot was reading Dante Alighieri’s main works when he wrote this poem. Above is a portrait of Dante and Beatrice by Henry Holiday. See Eliot’s full poem at: https://allpoetry.com/The-Love-Song-Of-J.-Alfred-Prufrock The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Let us go then, you…
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The Voice of T.S. Eliot
Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“, and especially the second and third lines, are said to herald in modernism in poetry. His is an excellent example of a unique voice. The voice reverberates from the words, almost jumping out of the page. It resonates for the reader, reaching out to decode the…
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Visiting Ein Gedi
I was drawn to the exotic name Ein Gedi, when coming across it in my brother’s first novel set partly in Israel. Then in a friend’s writing based on a poem by Ted Hughes from “Folktale”, part of Hughes’ collection entitled Capriccio. Hughes refers obliquely to the last of the leopards of Ein Gedi in…
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High Flights: Beginnings and Endings
High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased…